SIDE STREETS: Hernandez's arraignment gives media, police and onlookers plenty to gawk at

Cops and janitors know that every human tragedy requires someone to direct traffic during the tragedy and someone to clean up after it’s all over. Former New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez, whose arraignment would attract only one or two bored newspaper reporters if he didn’t play professi...

Cops and janitors know that every human tragedy requires someone to direct traffic during the tragedy and someone to clean up after it’s all over.

Former New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez, whose arraignment would attract only one or two bored newspaper reporters if he didn’t play professional football, created a fair amount of work in downtown Fall River on Friday and gave the leisure classes of all incomes something at which to gawk.

In back of the Justice Center, you can walk off the street and look through an iron fence and down at what military-heavy cop talk calls the “sally port.”

Friday afternoon, cops were unrolling yellow crime scene tape to keep people far away from the fence. When he left his arraignment, Hernandez would emerge from the sally port, which is a door in the southern wall of the courthouse.

Without the crime scene tape and the police car idling nearby, someone with a grudge and a brick could stand on tiptoe, reach over the fence and drop the brick onto Hernandez when he came out, which would not only harm him but embarrass the dozens of reporters set up on the other side of the courthouse.

Out front of the courthouse, Fall River City Council candidate David Meade sat on a low, gray brick wall. People walked by, smoking cigarettes and drinking large cups of iced coffee from a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts.

“I’m down here because I have interest in my city,” Meade said.

“This shouldn’t be here,” Meade said of both the courthouse and the crowd. “We don’t have room for this. Taunton has the room.”

A woman in black jeans and a green T-shirt emerged from the front door of the Justice Center, crying a little, probably not for Aaron Hernandez. That’s a frequent sight here, where people deal with matters from restraining orders to bail.

Reporters did not seek a quote from the crying woman and, when I did, she waved me away.

“I’m right here, in case anyone has any questions,” Meade said.

I counted 10 police officers on scene.

“We got people walking back and forth on this sidewalk,” a cop in a motorcycle helmet told a group of five people who stood talking in the middle of the sidewalk just south of the Justice Center.

They moved on.

Earlier in the day, a man had gone from one television reporter to the other, asking if he could have his picture taken with the reporter, for his Facebook page.

Roger Roy, who lives just across the street at Borden West, stopped to joke with the officers.

“When I was young and there was this many people together, they called it ‘unlawful assembly,’” Roy said.

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“That’s what they used to tell you if you were all hanging around at the bus stop,” Roy told me. “Then, you’d go home.”

No one was going home Friday afternoon.

“Side Streets” is a new column from Marc Munroe Dion, one that draws on his knowledge of the area and his affection for the city where he was born. It’s about people and places and history and the voice that only comes from one corner of southeastern Massachusetts.